The California Grocers Association on Wednesday, Jan. 20 filed a legal challenge to Long Beach’s “hero pay” ordinance, which was passed unanimously and with urgency at last night’s council meeting.
The ordinance mandates an additional $4 in hourly “hero pay” for frontline grocery workers in Long Beach.
The CGA lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles federal court, asks the court to declare the pending hazard pay degree invalid and unconstitutional. They’re also seeking a preliminary injunction that would stop the implementation of the ordinance until a judge can rule on the merits of their lawsuit.
At the beginning of the pandemic, grocers like Kroger voluntarily instated “hero pay,” an hourly wage boost to compensate for working in a high-risk environment during the pandemic.
That pay boost ended during the summer when the first surge subsided.
“These folks that are working at these markets […] are heroes, this is nothing new,” Mayor Robert Garcia said at the meeting. “They have received this type of additional pay in the past, and if they deserved in the past, they deserve it today.”
The Long Beach City Council, led by Councilmember Mary Zendejas, moved to create the “hero pay” ordinance to assist grocery workers who have a high exposure risk to the virus.
“If you think about all the essential workers that are out there, it’s hard to name a group of folks that have as much contact with different individuals in that level of proximity that these folks have,” Garcia said.
During public comment, Long Beach grocery store workers voiced support of the ordinance.
“At this point, we’re all telling ourselves, ‘Just one more day, just one more day.’ Are we going to make it one more day? Will we get it?” grocery worker Jenay Michelle said.
Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Target and Albertsons, among others, have all seen record increases in sales, according to a December study by the Brookings Institute.
“We are risking our health and our family’s health,’ Food 4 Less worker Christina Meija said. “When all the company is concerned about is its profits, having a record year.”
She said her store had 18,927 customers in the past week. During public comment, longtime Ralph’s employee Anthony Campanella said he’d “never gone to work in so much fear.”
Elizabeth Leon, who has worked at Food 4 Less for five years, said she was out of work for three weeks due to COVID-19. She waited 19 days for her emergency pay.
“I decided that I would not pay my rent,” she said. “We are so overworked. [We] expose ourselves to thousands of people. The COVID pay is essential. Nobody should ever have to choose between paying their rent or feeding their kids.”
The CGA lawsuit alleges that the ordinance is illegal because, by singling out certain grocers and ignoring other groups that employ frontline workers, it violates the constitutional requirement that similarly situated people must be treated alike.
The CGA also argues that the ordinance is preempted by the federal National Labor Relations Act, which protects the integrity of the collective-bargaining process.
“Grocery store workers are frontline heroes, and that’s why grocers have already undertaken a massive effort to institute measures to make both workers and customers safer in stores,” said Ron Fong, the CGA’s president and CEO. “But this ordinance is clearly illegal in that it interferes with the collective-bargaining process and singles out only certain grocers while ignoring other retail workers and workers in other industries providing essential services during the pandemic.”
Fong said firefighters, police officers and health care workers, as well as transportation, sanitation and restaurant workers, are essential, “yet grocers are the only businesses being targeted for extra pay mandates. We look forward to our day in court to contest the legality of this ordinance.”
The council approved the measure on first reading Tuesday; a final vote is scheduled for Feb. 2.
The next Long Beach City Council meeting will take place Tuesday, Feb. 2 at 5 p.m. via teleconference.
